By any standards, the achievement of the three editors is both extraordinary and exemplary. Behind this comprehensive scholarly edition of Carlyle's history of the French Revolution, based on a newly edited critical text of the 1837 publication in three volumes, lie decades of collaborative scholarship, assisted by generous institutional support. [...] In short, these three volumes stand as a fitting tribute to the scholars who have collaborated and to Carlyle for a heroic attempt to capture the kaleidoscopic and ever-changing nature of an event whose echoes continue to reverberate.
Mark Cumming is a Professor of English Literature at Memorial University, Newfoundland. He is the editor of The Carlyle Encyclopedia (2004), and author of A Disimprisoned Epic: Form and Vision in Carlyle's French Revolution (1988), as well as several articles on Carlyle's theory and practice of history. He served as editor of Carlyle Studies Annual from 1999-2004.
David R. Sorensen is Professor of English at Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia. He has published extensively on Thomas Carlyle and is a senior editor of the Duke-Edinburgh Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (1970-ongoing, 46 vols.). His most recent work is an edited edition of Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution for Oxford World's Classics (2019), with Brent E. Kinser and Mark Engel. He is co-editor of Carlyle Studies Annual and a co-founder of the Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium (2011), a digital repository of Victorian life-writing.
Professional editor and independent classical scholar, Mark Engel was born in Los Angeles, and educated at Palisades High School and the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California. With Michael K. Goldberg and Joel J. Brattin, he edited On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1993), working through the many 19th century editions, to establish the authorized critical text, which is documented in the Note on the Text and the hefty textual apparatus. With Rodger L. Tarr, he edited Sartor Resartus (2000), again leading the painstaking collation and discussion of variants that produced the authorized critical text, which is fully documented. A lifelong friend and colleague of Gregory Bateson, he compiled and edited the paperback edition of Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Mark Engel also served on the International Bateson Institute Board until his death in December 2017. Working with David R. Sorensen and Mark Cumming, Mark Engel established the text of The French Revolution.
Brent E. Kinser is Professor of English at Western Carolina University, North Carolina. He has published extensively on Thomas Carlyle and is the author of The American Civil War and the Shaping of British Democracy (2011) as well as the co-editor (with David R. Sorensen) of Carlyle's On Heroes and Hero-Worship (2013). He is also co-editor of Carlyle Studies Annual (2006--) and a founding director of The Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium (2012--).